whose growing numbers at once made their economic distress and their political impotence more conspicuous than ever. There was a dangerous riot in Spa Fields, London, in November, 1816. Another occurred at Huddersfield in the following May, a third at Derby, and a fourth at Nottingham. Secret societies were formed in different parts of the country, and the tongue of Hunt and the pen of William Cobbett, rivalling the earlier popularity of {145} the _Rights of Man_, led the Government to suppose that the whole fabric of society was in danger. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the Seditious Meetings Act was revived, and Secret Committees of both Houses were appointed to collect information. It is clear from the reports of these Committees that there was nothing in the state of the country to justify these unusual measures. The great mass of the people showed no sympathy with the rioters. Education was spreading rapidly in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Scotland, and the artisans were thinking for themselves. Violence was rare, but agitation was general. Large bodies of people marched to public meetings at Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other provincial towns. Not a shadow of proof was produced by the Committees that these had any criminal intention, and one fact is sufficient to prove the contrary. At almost every meeting women and children were present.[181] The discipline and order of these crowds were indeed, in the obscure reasonings of men like Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, an additional proof of their seditious character. A turbulent common people never puzzled a Tory. It was the nature of the beast to be disorderly. But a common people which thought, and spoke, and organized, and met and dispersed in companies at the advice of its leaders, was a thing which he could not understand. What he could not understand, he feared. Not the least significant fact in this record of dull and unimaginative mismanagement is the connection between Castlereagh and Continental statesmen of the type of Metternich. These people had formed a Holy Alliance for the express purpose of suppressing attempts to establish Liberal Constitutions in Europe. Castlereagh, representing Great Britain, had refused to join the Alliance. But in his own country he was pursuing its very policy, as the European despots well knew. The letters in which the Courts of {146} Vienna and Berlin congratulated him on his suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of public meeting are among the most degrading which have ever passed through the British Foreign Office.[182]